Sarah Palin popularity down to 22%

22% - I think that would be the FOX News crowd. We need to keep reminding ourselves that the crazies running the GOP, like Palin, are only liked and listened to by one-fifth of the country. Stop treating her, and them, as if they represent most of America - they don't. Read the rest of this post...

Pay-to-play government — Fire department watches as house burns down

Olbermann was on fire Monday, with enough Big Money pieces to make your head spin — or rather your stomach turn — as you consider the future of what used to be the Republic. (I'll have a piece up later on how it's become the Republic of Rove.)

But this Countdown piece is both so visceral, and has so many angles, that it deserves pride of place. The background elements:

• A rural county in Tennessee (close to Rand Paul's state) • A city fire department supported by taxes • A supplemental fee required of county residents to get city fire services extended to their individual homes (on a home-by-home basis) • A county resident who forgot to pay his fee (but see below on "forgot")

It's a witch's brew of natural contradictions and consequences. The clip:



First, a question: Would you change your mind about this person if you thought he was a Republican voter?

Now some thoughts. This situation presents a rich set of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand conflicts:

Misfortune vs. fairness. On the one hand, this is unfortunate by any measure, a terrible and inhumane tragedy. Firemen watching a fire! On the other hand, this is fair in a pay-to-play world. He says he forgot (though by his own admission, he didn't pay three years ago either). Others choose not to pay. Either way, pay up or lose. The IRS doesn't take "I forgot" to pay taxes. The cops don't take "I forgot" to stop drinking.

Pay-to-play vs. public services. On the one hand, as progressives we think that pay-to-play is wrong on its face, always. We would ask, why doesn't the county simply tax all county residents and provide city-subscribed fire service to everyone?

But on the other hand, this guy didn't see that as the solution. His solution is a fire chief who winks at the rules in his favor. In other words, he's fine with pay-to-play, but he wants to cheat the system by paying for insurance only when he has a claim, and pocketing his money otherwise. This keeps his own costs down at the expense of funding a needed public service for all. And he wants an enforcement official who guarantees that kind of "deal."

Taking responsibility. On the one hand, people like him — people with the least, or at least, with less — are always hurt by pay-to-play. And the sell to him by the Big Boys is that pay-to-play denies "undeserved" services to the undeserving Other. The Other needs to "take responsibility," a nice moralizer's argument for self-dealing and withholding.

On the other hand, it's inevitably people like him who end up "taking responsibility" (i.e. paying the price) themselves, since in their ignorance, they don't ever see that withholding from The Other always results in withholding from themselves as well. And that's where he is; given that he likes the solution he voted for, the party of "take responsibility" hands him these results, and that admonition. He's stuck.

Finally, incentives and the problem for progressives. On the one hand, we don't want this world for anyone, for us or for them. (I'm deliberately rejecting revenge as a motivation; in my opinion, to be socially vengeful is to be exactly what they are, and what we reject.) We want quality government services, fairly funded by equitable (and progressive) taxation, available to everyone.

On the other hand, the incentives are all wrong. Yes, the working poor are always hurt, but Tea Party "freedom-loving" low-enders and retirees (not the most affluent of folks), as voters, are a big part of why we're in this mess. It's rural Mississippi that keeps Mississippi shoeless. It's eastern Oregon that keeps all Oregon in fiscal woes. It's small-state senators, representing almost no one, who pack the Senate with more conservative votes than there are conservative voters.

So how do we "incentivize" conservative voters, as opposed to their Big Money manipulators? In a Freakonomics world, the answer is consequences. Wall Street is incentivized by government bailouts to take more risks; in that world they call it "creating moral hazard." How do you re-incentivize Wall Street the other way? The pain of a world without bailouts.

Thus the problem for progressives. Wall Street's pain is corporate pain as much as individual pain. Mr. Cranick's pain is only individual pain — very tough to countenance. The man is in tears for a reason; as would be any of us. And yet, it's the incentives, stupid. Conservative voters need a reason to stop voting against the interests of us all. If they don't stop, we will all go down with them.

See what I mean? Contradictions and consequences. Or, to quote Latka in one of my favorite Taxi episodes, "America is one tough town."

GP Read the rest of this post...

Southern Baptist leader attacks yoga as un-Christian

Do these people realize how silly they sound?

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler says the stretching and meditative discipline derived from Eastern religions is not a Christian pathway to God.

Mohler said he objects to "the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine."

"That's just not Christianity," Mohler told The Associated Press.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Yeah, I mean, where's the hate in that? Read the rest of this post...

Rachel: Carl Paladino is a street-art project named Bob Dobbs

I can't let this go by without a post — a brilliant analysis by Rachel Maddow of NY gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino, as a street art project. Nice stuff.



I'm mad too, Carl — mad about Bob Dobbs.

GP

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Back to school shopping gives retailers hope for Christmas

A strong shopping season is probably out of the question but retailers are no doubt hoping for at least some growth. Whether shoppers really should buy more is another question.

Analysts said that September sales at stores open at least a year — a crucial indicator called same-store sales — suggested what many have been hoping for: consumers may be ready to open their wallets — even if cautiously — for the coming holiday season.

“We are certainly looking very closely at holiday sales, and back-to-school does help us gauge the enthusiasm of the consumer,” John Long, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon Associates, said.

Ken Perkins, president of research firm Retail Metrics, said, “I don’t think we will be back to 2005 levels, but I think it is going to be a decent season with consumers retrenching to save for the upcoming holiday season.”

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Obama pocket vetoes bill that would make foreclosures easier

Very good news, and some rare quick (and good) action from the White House. Chris wrote about this topic this morning. And KagroX, aka David Waldman, has some interesting analysis of the pocket veto that borders on being over this lawyer's - see if it rises above yours. Read the rest of this post...

Poverty hits the suburbs as Gingrich mocks the poor

He always was a compassionate person. The US suburbs have often been swing vote areas and now they are increasingly where poverty is growing. It should be interesting to see how people react to being called a bum by the new Gingrich pitch. Since the unemployment problem was launched during the Bush years there's little question about who created this problem of poverty. The poverty numbers spiked during the GOP years so outside of the Teabaggers, who really believes the Democrats are the party of food stamps over work when they lost their work because of GOP economics?

And remember, the GOP is preparing to roll back the Wall Street reforms. Just how serious is the GOP about promoting jobs when they're ready to trigger the next financial collapse? If anything, their policies will cause even more poverty and the need for more welfare.

The analyses of census data released Thursday show that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million.

That's faster than the national growth rate of 26.5 percent and more than double the city rate of 16.7 percent.

After the recession began in 2007, the suburbs continued to post larger increases in the number of poor - adding 1.8 million, compared to 1.4 million in the cities.

Suburbs are now home to roughly one-third of the nation's poor.

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CA GOP candidates Fiorina, Whitman avoiding Palin - Fiorina even compares her to Democrat

"People like Sarah Palin"?

“I’m happy to accept the endorsement of many, many folks who have been supportive of my campaign—whether they are people like Sarah Palin or Democrats or Independents.”

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US Chamber won't deny charge that it's co-mingling foreign $ in US political account; attacks ThinkProgress as community Soros plot

If the US Chamber of Commerce were innocent of the charge of having mixed foreign funds with US donations in the account it uses for its US political attack ads, you'd think they'd deny the charge. No such luck.

The Chamber did, however, launch a weird attack yesterday on the messenger - a blog named ThinkProgress. According to the Chamber, ThinkProgress is apparently run by Karl Marx and (that rich international Jew with horns who controls everything) George Soros.

From Greg Sargent at the Washington Post we get a taste of the Chamber's response:

These accusations by a George Soros-funded, anti-business blog (not a "report," as some in the media are saying) are unfounded, deceitful, and completely erroneous. They are a desperate attempt to silence those who support free enterprise, and a diversion by people upset about their grim prospects in the upcoming election.

But as the Washington Post's Sargent notes, the Chamber refused to simply deny ThinkProgress' charge, that they are co-mingling foreign and domestic donations, possibly leading to foreign money illegally financing US elections:

When I asked Ms. Freeman whether the dues from AmChams go into the same general fund that bankrolls the Chamber's ads, she declined to answer. "We don't feel obligated to answer that question because we follow all applicable law, and no foreign money funds our voter education activities," Freeman told me.

If the Chamber were innocent, wouldn't they just deny it? Read the rest of this post...

GOP looking to hire some West Virginia 'hicks' for TV ad

They seriously said that:

A Republican ad that shows a couple of regular-looking guys commiserating in a diner about West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) turns out to have been shot with actors, from a script, in Philadelphia.

But not just any actors: “We are going for a ‘Hicky’ Blue Collar look,” read the casting call for the ad, being aired by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “These characters are from West Virginia so think coal miner/trucker looks.”

UPDATE: The west Virginia governor, and Democratic Senate candidate, Gov. Joe Manchin, has called on his Republican opponent, John Raese, to apologize for the ads. Read the rest of this post...

Obama tells donors to stop sulking

Here's a helpful hint that every spouse in America will back me up on: When someone is ticked at you, don't tell them to get over it. Yet that's what the President basically did again yesterday to Democratic donors.

Can you imagine a fight in the Obama household?

HER: "Why don't you ever put the toilet seat down?"

HIM: "Get over it."

HER: "Did you just tell me to 'get over it'?"

HIM: "Whiner."

HER: What? Where is this coming from?

HIM: Here we go, gonna get all wee-wee'd up on me.

Somehow I suspect he wouldn't dare. From the Washington Post:

President Obama returned Wednesday night to his get-off-your-duffs message, warning Democrats at a low-key million-dollar fundraising dinner against "sulking and sitting back."

Borrowing a line from Vice President Biden, Obama said that he shouldn't be compared to the Almighty but to the alternative.

Here' some of the transcript:

And we’re not finished -- unless we lose sight of that long game and we start sulking and sitting back and not doing everything we need to do in terms of making sure that our folks turn out.

Joe Biden has a useful saying. He says, don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. (Laughter.) And I think -- I think Democrats would be well-served right now to just keep that uppermost in their minds.

No, wrong. We didn't vote for "better than Bush." Any Democrat would have been better than Bush. We voted for "change." We voted for someone who promised to fight for a public option, who promised to be gays' fierce advocate, who promised immigration reform in his first year, who promised to reform Wall Street, who promised no offshore drilling, who promised to be a champion of civil liberties, and on and on and on.

What we got is someone who seems unwilling to ever fight for anything he promised.  No compromise is too big or too early in the Obama household.

Make no mistake, no one outside of the White House is confusing Barack Obama with God, thank you very much. Nor are we confusing him any longer with the man who ran for President in 2008. I liked that guy. I have no idea who took the oath of office in his place. Read the rest of this post...

Why did Congress just pass a bill making it easier for banks to foreclose?

UPDATE II: Obama will veto this. Well done by the White House. This still leaves questions for Congress.

UPDATE: White House says it's taking a careful look at this legislation.

Again, it's more about corporatist policies than Republican or Democrat. Considering all of the abuse in this area, Obama needs to veto this immediately.

A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama's signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week.

The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.

The timing raised eyebrows, coming during a rising furor over improper affidavits and other filings in foreclosure actions by large mortgage processors such as GMAC, JPMorgan and Bank of America.

Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is out on the campaign trail again today. He's doing an event for Maryland's Governor O'Malley this afternoon. Then, he's heading to Chicago to do a couple of events for Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias.

Last night, at a DNC fundraiser, the President admonished us again. Last night, he used the term "sulking." That 2008 Obama speech strategy was soaring rhetoric. The 2010 Obama speech strategy is scolding. Perhaps if the President's first two years had remotely matched the promises -- and it looked like he was trying to achieve his goals -- he wouldn't have to yell at us this year. But, we are where we are.

The Vice President is on the road. He'll be in Madison, Wisconsin doing an event for gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett. Then, he's heading to Springfield, Missouri to campaign for Senate candidate Robin Carnahan.

Robin's opponent, Roy Blunt, is getting a lot of support from the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But, the Chamber is getting a lot of support from foreign businesses, which we learned via Think Progress. And, Blunt sure didn't want to talk to Think Progress about that. In fact, he ran from them and pretended he was on a phone call. Carnahan's campaign is holding a vote to guess who Blunt was on the fake phone call with. My guess is the Emir of Bahrain. This should be a huge issue. If Dems were taking foreign money, it would be. Read the rest of this post...

Both US and Afghanistan speaking with Taliban

The sooner they settle and move on, the better. The war there is a complete waste of life and money. It's also increasingly clear that it will not end any time soon no matter how much money and fancy technology the US throws at the situation. The Guardian:

Hamid Karzai's government held direct talks with senior members of the Haqqani clan over the summer, according to well-placed Pakistani and Arab sources. The US contacts have been indirect, through a western intermediary, but have continued for more than a year.

The Afghan and US talks were described as extremely tentative. The Haqqani network has a reputation for ruthlessness, even by the standards of the Afghan insurgency, and has the closest ties with al-Qaida. But Kabul and Washington have come to the conclusion that they cannot be excluded if an enduring peace settlement is to be reached.

A senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "you wouldn't be wrong" when asked whether talks involving Haqqani, Karzai and the US were taking place. But he refused to comment further, citing the sensitivity of the matter. Calls and emails soliciting comment from the US state department were unreturned by late last night.

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British Conservatives: We're all in this together...sort of

As long as you don't have too many children or you are one of the bankers who helped create the global recession, everyone will feel the pain of the austerity program. Oh, and don't expect any help from the government, you spongers. Is that inspirational or what? It's hard not to get choked up and have a little tear in your eye. The Guardian:

He told the party faithful in Birmingham that "the spirit of the big society" could "blast through" if everyone pulled together in the national interest.

The coalition, he said, was not all about cuts, but "an attempt to create a country based not on Labour's selfish individualism but one based on mutual responsibility". Labour, he said, was now the party of the status quo: "We are the radicals now, breaking apart the old system."

Tackling one of its most common criticisms, he said of his core idea: "The big society is not about creating cover for cuts but an attempt to create a citizenship that is not simply a transaction in which you put your taxes in and get your services out. When we say 'we are all in this together' that is not a cry for help, but a call to arms."

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GOP planning to gut Wall Street regulation after the election

With all of the campaign contributions they're receiving from Wall Street, who ever would have imagined such a thing? Because self-regulation, dumping consumer protections and adding in more fees for customers has worked so well in the past. Countdown to the Great Recession II. Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest on Wall Street? What's worse is that there will be plenty of Democrats ready to join the GOP in this destruction as they have done in the past. Until they prove otherwise, it's hard to imagine them being tough enough to fight against this insanity. Reuters:

Analysts see little to no chance of a full dismantling of the law meant to prevent a repeat of the 2007-2008 financial crisis that set off the worst U.S. recession in generations.

But Republicans are targeting specific provisions of the reforms, such as funding for the new consumer watchdog. On such narrow issues, they might get some traction, analysts said.

The congressional oversight process, about to get going as regulators gear up for implementation, may lead to substantive tweaks to the complicated Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

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Study: Pay gap on Wall Street widens, worst of all industries

Is this really much of a surprise? Each day Wall Street does a great job of making themselves even less liked than the day before.

For women in the financial-services industry like Davis, who’s still unemployed, the last few years haven’t been kind. More than five times as many women as men lost their jobs in the three years after July 2007, and pay for full-time managers compared with their male counterparts worsened between 2000 and 2007, according to U.S. government data.

Women managers in finance, a group that includes bank tellers as well as executives, earned 63.9 cents for every dollar of income men earned in 2000, based on median salaries, according to Government Accountability Office statistics analyzed by Bloomberg. In 2007, the last year for which data are available, the figure was 58.8 cents. The 41-cent gap was the biggest in any of 13 industries surveyed by the GAO, and only two others had a widening disparity.

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